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Justice and the Press

The Times has won an important victory in the Supreme Court, whose judgment makes clear that open justice comes at a price

A fundamental principle of open justice is that a criminal trial is a public event. Evidence is heard in open court to protect victims and suspects alike from the secrecy that arbitrary justice tends to prefer. If the rule of law is to apply equally to all it must be seen to do so. As the public cannot squeeze into every courtroom, the press must be its eyes and ears.

The courts agree. Even so, it has taken four years for The Times, together with the Oxford Mail, to secure the right to identify a millionaire businessman named in evidence in a landmark child sex grooming trial in which five men were jailed for life.